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The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum is dedicated to fostering the work of innovative artists whose interpretations of the world around us serve as a platform to encourage creative thinking.

Robert Longo

Untitled (Dividing Time)

September 13, 2017, to October 11, 2017

The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum is pleased to present the fourth public artwork in Creative Time’s Pledges of Allegiance series: Untitled (Dividing Time), by Robert Longo. The flag was raised on September 13 at The Aldrich and will be on view through October 11, 2017. The project is a serialized commission of sixteen flags, each created by acclaimed artists to reflect the current political climate.

“I created this flag for Creative Time’s Pledges of Allegiance project based on a large-scale charcoal drawing I completed on the day of the
most recent presidential election. The drawing, Untitled (Nov. 8, 2016), consists of a left and right panel, with five inches separating them,” said artist Robert Longo. “I chose to draw the right panel larger but with fewer stars; my intention is to present the current symptomatic divide in the United States.”

Longo’s Pledges of Allegiance flag is based on the artist’s 2016 large-scale charcoal drawing, exhibited in Longo’s “The Destroyer Cycle” exhibition at Metro Pictures in New York City.

Creative Time’s Pledges of Allegiance project continues to grow and expand nationally. In a gesture of solidarity, Robert Longo’s flag will be raised simultaneously at the following ten locations:

Pledges of Allegiance is one of three major Longo projects currently showing in New York, Dividing Time is joined by the Brooklyn Museum’s Proof: Francisco Goya, Sergei Eisenstein, Robert Longo and the street-spanning public art installation American Bridge Project, curated by Creative Time board member Jill Brienza for Hunter College.

ABOUT THE ARTIST, ROBERT LONGO

Robert Longo (b. 1953) is a New York-based artist, filmmaker, and musician. He was among the five artists included in the seminal 1977 exhibition Pictures at Artists Space in New York. Longo has exhibited extensively throughout Europe, Asia and the United States, including the Venice Biennale, Documenta, and the Whitney Biennial. He has had several retrospective exhibitions, including exhibitions at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, and the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Nice. His latest solo exhibition, “The Destroyer Cycle” opened in May 2017 at Metro Pictures in New York City. Alongside Kate Fowle, Longo recently co-curated the exhibition at the Garage Museum of Contemporary Art in Moscow, “PROOF: Francisco Goya, Sergei Eisenstein, Robert Longo,” which is currently on view at the Brooklyn Museum until January 2018. Robert Longo lives and works in New York and is represented by Metro Pictures, NYC; Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac, Paris/Salzburg; and Capitain Petzel, Berlin.

Each flag embodies art’s ability to channel political passion, providing a unifying symbol around which to unite, as well as a call-to-action for institutions nationwide to raise upcoming Pledges of Allegiance flags in solidarity with Creative Time.

Pledges of Allegiance aims to inspire a sense of community among cultural institutions, beginning with an urgent articulation of the political demands of the moment. Each flag points to an issue the artist is passionate about or a cause they believe is worth fighting for, and speaks to how we might move forward collectively as a country. To inaugurate the project, Creative Time raised Marilyn Minter’s RESIST FLAG on the roof of its headquarters on Flag Day, June 14.

Pledges of Allegiance was originally conceived by Alix Browne and developed in collaboration with Cian Browne, Fabienne Stephan, and Opening Ceremony.